Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just got 2 full size dragons shipped to me. They are brother and sister, I have been keeping them together for a couple weeks now. they get along just fine, but can they be kept together or should they be seperated and why? I have been hearing that I should seperate them right away, is this true? Thanks

This is very true for many reasons but the most important one is they are brother and sister. As they are adults, they will breed and produce offspring which will be inbred. Though normally, it is possible to do this without much risk of negative traits being inherited and manifesting themselves as health problems (ie tail kinks, poorly developed organs, missing limbs or other mutations etc).

As bearded dragons in North American tend to be all related back to original animals imported long ago before Australia banned all exports of their native animals, and over many generations, there is a good change nearly all dragons in the US are related to each other (and Canada too for that matter). Hence, depending on the habits of who bred the dragons, they may be very distantly related, genetically in their past, or very closely related...thus breeding the brother to sister, could result in a high fatality rate among hatchlings and defects.

Besides genetic reasons, having a single male and female together can result in stress on the female (constant attempts by the male to mate with her stress of bearing clutches of eggs, competition for food, cross contamination of parasites etc).
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PHLdyPayne